


On the Count of Ten

by LocketShoru



Category: Saint Seiya, 聖闘士星矢: 冥王神話 | Saint Seiya: The Lost Canvas
Genre: Adventure, Comedy, M/M, Multi, Polyamory, Romance, Saint Seiya Secret Santa 2020, Spectre!Aries Shion, Spectre!Libra Dohko, Time Travel, Violence (chairs), men from the 1700s get really confused about the existence of plastic, multiple POVs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:40:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28306191
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LocketShoru/pseuds/LocketShoru
Summary: [StS Secret Santa 2020] The Garuda Division OT4 is after a stolen object, hunting Sea Dragon Unity down to get it back. They get thrown off a cliff.... and naturally, when you get thrown off a cliff, nothing goes as planned.
Relationships: Garuda Aiacos/Bennu Kagaho/Aries Shion/Libra Dohko, Julian/Marinas
Comments: 11
Kudos: 3





	On the Count of Ten

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Astro_Break](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Astro_Break/gifts).



> Happy Secret Santa, Tsutsu! Sorry I sent Tess over to go interrogate you so I could actually get the characterization right, but also, hope it worked. :p I wanted to do stuff with the Marinas, but I didn't know anything about them, and I laughed my ass off when Ryry chose me to do yours considering I got you into the Garuda OT4 in the first place - so I managed to do all of the prompt!  
> The title is naturally the song by Marcus Warner - I recommend the whole album, and it was largely what I was listening to the entire time I wrote it. I hope you like it!! <3 Next year I'll just bake you some bread and hide it in your mailbox. ;)

"So here's where we need to be?"

"Here's where we need to be." Aiacos dropped to his knees and then to his elbows, spying over the cliff. Kagaho followed his lead, dropping enough that he wouldn't be visible from the bottom of the cliff. Shion followed, or rather, he was knocked over by Kagaho's wing, but he set his chin down on Kagaho's forearm anyway. Dohko, for all his height, just sat down. He wouldn't have been visible either way.

Shion still looked a little unconvinced. "Why would it be in Bluegraad? There's no need for it to be there, and we're uncomfortably deep in Marina territory. I don't like any of this."

Kagaho shrugged. the tips of his flight feathers twitching. "They stole it. We'll get it back, and set them on fire. Simple as that."

Kagaho really never was a man of very many words. Aiacos bit back a snort of amusement, keeping his eyes focused on the quiet town below. He could taste awakened cosmos on the wind, not much, but enough that someone who knew how to burn it properly had to be down there. He opened his mouth a little to taste the wind. Maybe he could get a taste of whoever it was down there, or at lest whose banner they fought under.

The scent of seasalt hit his throat so hard he winced a little. Definite Marina - if this wasn't their main entrance to Atlantis, it was definitely one of their port towns where they bought produce and livestock. He leaned a little more over the cliff's edge, squinting. If he could locate the Marinas… 

A small, distant figure stepped out from a building, sparkling with such defiant cosmos that beside him, Dohko let out a soft growl of annoyance. Aiacos himself recognized the cosmos well: that distinct pattern of stars could only belong to the Sea Dragon, who he'd learned from Shion - who had learned from the Aquarius Cloth - was named Unity.

"Can we take him out?" Kagaho asked, voice gruff and low. Aiacos jerked his head in either direction.

"If we need to, I could take him out no problem," he answered. "But it would take up enough time someone would call reinforcements. Better to go undetected." 

Kagaho nodded silently. The Sea Dragon disappeared behind another building, and Aiacos rose to his knees, wings tight against his back. Everyone always expected his wings to be constantly reaching to the sky, and he'd been forced to explain to every single apprentice he'd ever had that it wasn't a comfortable position to hold his wings in. He grumbled to himself for a moment.

"How are we getting down there?" Shion asked, his fingers nervously twisting a lock of his hair. He was still new to having a surplice, it wasn't to anyone's surprise. "I could teleport us, but Lemurian teleportation's kind of obvious, and it's not like I can pass myself off as Atla training…"

"Grab onto me and don't let go, then." Aiacos shrugged, and both Dohko and Kagaho reached to place their hands on his shoulders. They'd both been around him long enough to know how it worked. "I can teleport us Judge-style or Cancer-style, and we're going Judge-style. He shouldn't see us this way. It's just a matter of figuring out where he's holding the damn thing."

"Where we're holding what, I do wonder?" asked a voice behind them. Aiacos whipped around as the blue-armoured soldier before him dropped his cloaking spell. His cosmos was a deep blue, more akin to the rolling sea than any constellation. Kagaho was on his feet already, wings flared and cosmos burning near-black. Dohko's shone green and hot, Shion's more unsure but certainly blue.

"We don't mean to cause any trouble or slaughter," Shion said, raising both of his hands in mock-surrender. His expression was just a little too surprised to be genuine, circled eyebrows raised a little too high. "One of your apprentices stole something from us, I don't think they knew it was a problem, and the object in question tends to react a little explosively if handled incorrectly. We're just trying to get it back before something bad happens, that's all."

Dohko relaxed his cosmos, nodding emphatically. "It would be really the worst thing if you guys got hurt trying to return it to us."

Kagaho's nod was quick and more sedated, but he didn't relax his cosmos. Aiacos tossed a hand up to scratch the back of his neck, flashing an award-winning smile that guaranteed both of his brothers would immediately inch themselves away from his chair in any all-hands meeting. "We'd really rather not have to cause you any trouble," he agreed. "And it's good practice to be able to get it back without getting into a skirmish or three. We _are_ coming up on the tradition of Athena declaring war on us, after all. It would help if my warriors were trained for it beforehand."

The Marina curled his lip. "Good for you," he remarked. "Unfortunately, we stole it because we need it, and we aren't giving it back. If you want it back so badly, go see if Master Sea Dragon feels like hearing you out. I don't think he cares to listen to corpses, though. _Tsunami Stars!_ "

The conjured wave of raw, burning cosmos hit him in the chest with enough force he stumbled backwards, finding no purchase on the ground of the cliff. His wings opened and extended. He flapped them forward, searching for air enough to levitate. What he found was a conjured gust of wind so powerful it knocked his three suitors back onto the cliff, sending the Marina stumbling back.

"Aiacos-!" Shion yelped. Aiacos swore something filthy under his breath, lifting both hands to the sky.

" _Sekishiki Zokusei Ha!_ " The ground opened up beneath them. Shion yelped, Dohko swore, and Kagaho, who had been a Spectre the longest and understood what he was doing, reached up and caught onto Aiacos' ankle with one hand. They dropped into the dark, violet-lined portal, and were gone.

The dark deepened the longer they were in the portal, stretching a few seconds into an infinite blackness so shadowed that Kagaho could barely feel the cosmos of his mates, let alone be able to see them. Somewhere in those few seconds, his hand lost its grip on Aiacos' ankle, slipping away from him. No matter how much he reached, he couldn't find it again.

The dark opened up to a cold, salty-aired room of blue-gray marble. He landed on his feet, wings flared outward to either side. None of his mates had come with him, for as far as he could tell, he was alone. He looked up, noting the incredibly strange light fixtures. They looked futuristic, industrial, a far cry from anything he'd ever seen before. He was still tilting his head to one side, trying to figure out what exactly they were and how they worked when he heard footsteps behind him.

He whipped around on his heel, taking several steps back and flaring his wings. He was a tall man - certainly the tallest of the group he called 'family' now - but puffing out his feathers to look larger worked on just about anything, and it wasn't a technique he expected to fail him now.

The person on the other side of the room, the only doorway out, was unmistakeably a Sea Dragon, blue plating and metalwork unique against all other Marinas. He wore a white cape, and he looked like a human version of Shion with blue hair that was, if anything, maybe a little sleeker. He carried some sort of shiny, colourful bag, out of which he appeared to be eating some sort of cracker.

Kagaho tensed. "Where am I," he said, and it wasn't a question. He disliked actually talking to others, preferring gestures and offerings and chirps over human language. In this case, he wanted to know so he could find his mates, the object they were seeking, and leave. He considered taking the shiny bag of crackers, too. It was shiny and colourful. He liked that.

The Sea Dragon, who did not feel like Unity's cosmos did, looked at him. "You're in the middle of Atlantis, and I'd love to know how you got here, _Spectre_. Can't say I know who the hell you are."

Kagaho sniffed the air. He didn't smell like a Marina, not at all. He smelled, if anything, like a Saint. His sense of smell wasn't typical to birds, but it was typical of a Spectre, who generally needed to be able to follow a trail properly when sight wasn't an option in the dark. "You smell like a Saint."

The Sea Dragon tensed, a sudden fury growing in his eyes. His cosmos, inactive but awakened before, began to burn. He stuffed the bag of crackers back into his pocket, hands already beginning to fill with burning cosmos. Apparently that wasn't the right thing to say. Kagaho raised his own cosmos, feeling the wet marble below him warm but not quite dry. He was a creature of air and fire, neither of which could be found in Atlantis of all places. He'd have to play his moves carefully.

"I do not smell _anything_ like Saga," he snapped. " _Hydrothermal Explosion!_ "

Kagaho snarled. "Be that way. _Corona Blast!"_ His technique slammed against the Sea Dragon's before quickly being overpowered, flames drenched by the boiling water before the explosion threw him backwards. He slammed into the wall, feeling the damp marble give way and shatter around him. Pain arched through him and down his spine, until he couldn't feel one wing. He pulled the other wing up between him and the Sea Dragon just in time to withstand a second _Hydrothermal Explosion_ , this one forcing his cosmos to dampen from the force of it.

He snarled, forcing his arm to rise and burn its cosmos. If he wanted to get anywhere, he had to stop that water. " _Rising…_ "

The Sea Dragon scoffed. "Not so hot now, are we, firebird? _Golden Triangle._ " Kagaho felt himself fall, tried to grab onto an edge that would allow him to refuse the portal he was being shoved into. His fingers didn't find purchase, and he fell.

Dohko swore as the darkness opened up onto a less-dark-but-still-shadowy room, attempting to right his orientation before promptly dropping facefirst onto the wet marble floor. He stayed there for a moment, drawing in much-needed breath. He slid up onto his knees after a few seconds, rubbing at his face in hopes of dislodging some of the smaller marble fragments from his cheeks. Two feet away was a slightly-wet golden carpet, the kind he usually saw in Master Alone's throne room. He really had to just hit the marble instead, and not even land on his feet.

"Well, you're not something I've ever seen before," remarked a smooth, young but masculine voice from his right side. He looked up, and on the dais but in front of a throne, was a blue-haired man in a jarringly-futuristic white tuxedo. He had a waistcoat and tailcoat, but instead of the cravats Dohko was used to, he had some sort of tie instead, hanging down his chest and tucked into his waistcoat.

"That's pretty mutual," Dohko agreed, shifting back to sit up a bit more on his knees. He glanced around him - save for the guards flanking them at the edges of the room on either side, they were alone, and the guards looked as useful as Sanctuary's guards or the Meikai's Skeletons, which was to say not at all. He looked up again at the blue-haired man. "I admire your inventiveness in dodging having to wear a cravat. Those things are suffocating."

The blue-haired man stared at him. "Nobody's worn a cravat in over two hundred years," he answered. "Are all Spectres as dumb and handsome as you? If they are, I should recruit more of them. I'm sure Hades won't mind, I can pay him for them."

Dohko rose to his feet, tensing. "People still wear cravats where I'm from. I should ask where I am and who you are, because you can't just buy Spectres. We don't really take kindly to being bought like trinkets, either."

The blue haired man snapped his fingers. In his hand was suddenly a trident, glittering blue as Sea Dragon Unity's scale, and as for his own armour… Dohko had seen it before, pouring over books with Aiacos as he learned different methods of crafting surplices. The original methods hadn't been lost. It didn't matter where the techniques came from, scales or cloths or kamuis, if it worked then he had to learn it. Aiacos had been gentle, helping him remember the words for everything, teaching him first with diagrams and then over a forge. Aiacos looked best in workman's clothing over a forge, regardless of what the fancy events forced him to dress like.

Regardless, he'd seen that armour before, in a book narrated by a man prettier than the one in front of him, wearing the Poseidon Kamui. The trident looked rather dangerous. He was a little glad the Libra Surplice had a pair of shields, it looked like he was going to need them. The godvessel before him swung the trident over his shoulder and smiled. He had a smile not unlike Aiacos, award-winning and bright and not at all empty of malice.

"So tell me then, dear Spectre, before you go trying to attack someone you can't possibly win against. Are there any pretty Spectres who'd take a scale and my attention? I can always use more pretty boys, and if you fetch them, I won't have my generals kill you."

Dohko glowered. "Not the ones I should be with, that I'm half convinced you took from me," he answered darkly. He'd never much been one for sharing his things, or his people. Kagaho, Shion, and Aiacos were his people. His family, his suitors, and his mates. He wasn't going to give them up for anyone, and certainly not someone who already had a hoard as big as Poseidon surely would.

His opponent shrugged. "I haven't seen any other Spectres today, just you and your attitude. You still haven't told me about these pretty boys of yours."

"They're mine, and they're not yours," Dohko replied, voice sharp. He rose to his feet, one hand on the sword tucked at his waist. He wasn't supposed to use the weapons of the Libra Cloth, but he was allowed to use the weapons of the Libra Surplice, and there was nothing stopping him from throwing his sword like a javelin and trusting it to return to him later. Poseidon's vessel shrugged. 

"As you say," he agreed. "Tell me about them." He frowned a little at Dohko's expression, and settled onto his throne, resting his trident by the armrest. "If you tell me about them, I'll tell you about mine?"

Dohko huffed, and folded his arms. "Fine. Kagaho is the tallest and he doesn't talk much, but he has a chest that's better than any pillow and he brings me sparkly things he thinks I'll like. Shion's slightly smaller than Kagaho and when I die, it'll be because I suffocated in his hair. He talks to the armours and I think he'd live in the forge if we let him. Aiacos is the only one with chest hair and he laughs like he knows what dying feels like and thinks there's not a funnier punchline in existence. He's almost as short as I am, but somehow he always elects to sleep on top of me instead of anyone who isn't crushed under his weight. Happy now?"

He grinned, and clapped his hands. "Excellent. They sound like wonderful men. I have several men, and they're very good. Kanon is quiet and grumpy but we can talk him into anything if we try hard enough, and he makes a very handsome mermaid. Sorrento's just so sweet, and you should hear him play. Io makes the best cookies and can fix any problem we've got, Isaak pretends to be all formal but he's got a heart of absolute gold, more valuable than anything I have, and Kasa-"

"My lord, much as I'll be flattered by anything you say about me, we've had some other invaders. I'd rather this one not cause you any harm."

Dohko turned on his heel, cosmos bright and burning, only to see another Marina, this one with a gaunt face and a darker scale. And then he saw the sturdy oak chair being swung, brief and blinding pain, and he dropped to his knees.

The last thing he thought was that if there were other intruders, then his suitors had already been caught, and they were all in so very much danger.

Shion turned as he fell, driving his shoulder into the ground as he dropped like a rock onto the marble floor. It hurt, but no more than other falls he'd taken before when he misjudged a teleport. He swore under his breath, groaning a little, before rising and looking around. A cosmos glittered to his left, and he looked that way first, finding himself staring at a Marina clad mostly in their scale with short-ish green hair and one missing eye. He set down his yarn at the loom, rising with a jumping muscle in his jaw that Shion recognized as quiet fury. It didn't seem like he was all that popular with the Marinas.

"Pope Shion," the Marina said, and his voice was full of loathing. "Clad in a surplice, huh? Is that what you've come to, because Saga toppled you? Hope you're not expecting me to _help_ , sorry old man, because I'd rather kill you."

Shion blinked. "I think you have me mistaken for someone else," he answered, slowly. "You've got my name right, but I'm not the Pope, and I'm twenty entire years old, so unless I've seriously misjudged your age here, which is possible after hitting my head on the ground, you're my age, so I think calling me a sorry old man is a bit rude. But you also want me dead I guess, so I don't know if that's actually more rude-"

"Shut _up_." Shion fell silent, looking at the Marina, eyebrows raised in concern. The Marina stepped over to him, footsteps clicking against the floor, glowering at him. "You're not even a proper Saint. You left me there with them and nobody else, you didn't even bother making sure we were okay. You left me for dead, and I'm lucky Poseidon saved me, because you weren't ever going to."

Shion glowered in return. It was true he was both Spectre and Saint, yes, found his heartstrings pulled a little too much not only by his friend and comrade, Dohko, but the two Spectres he'd been spending more and more time with. Aiacos smiled a heartbreaker's smile, played with his hair and gave context to the memories the cloths and surplices could share with him. Kagaho found sparkly rocks and teacups and turned every bed he'd ever been told to sleep in into a nest, and when he laughed, which was rare enough, it was music to his ears. Dohko kept it real, and reminded him to take it easy, and he didn't know where he'd be without them.

It didn't give any Marina the right to insult him, though, or to look down on him because he still wasn't quite sure how his surplice worked. His cosmos crackled around him with burning embers of stars, inching its way up to a full-fledged inferno. "I didn't do it, I don't really know what you're talking about, but if I'm not a proper Saint then neither are you," he answered, calm as he could manage. "I suggest you calm down and apologize, or I'm going to have to hurt you. I don't exactly know what I'm doing, so I can't promise to pull my punches."

The Marina glared at him. "I'm Kraken Isaak," he said, and the temperature of the room dropped with every syllable. If Shion wanted to have the strength for any attacks at all, he was going to have to burn his cosmos a lot hotter. "And you are going _down_. _Tempest Spire!_ "

Shion jumped to his left just in time, kicking off the sudden pillar of ice that had sprouted from where he'd just been standing. His fingers interlocked, thrusting out in front of him with a dark blue cosmos that he only halfway recognized as his own. Aiacos had taught him a few of his own techniques, but they weren't in his mind now, no, only the ones he actually remembered. " _Stardust Revolution!_ "

A wall of ice blocked his technique, shooting upwards straight to the ceiling. Shion landed on the ground, burning his cosmos as hot as he could, feeling it spark under his skin. Laughter echoed from the other side of the glacial wall. "Not feeling so warm? Don't worry. It's going to get pretty chilly in here."

Isaak's voice was almost singsong. Shion wanted to wipe it off his face so badly, and the moment he reappeared from the ice- " _Aurora Borealis_!" A beam of energy punched through his sternum, straight through his spine. He screamed, feeling the chill of it race through him. He had to keep burning his cosmos, he had to, it was the only way he wasn't going to freeze to death.

" _Stardust Revolution_ , you utter asshole," he snarled. He felt the sparkling warmth race out of him, discharging into the lightning strikes he knew it was going to be. With the warmth leaving him, he felt his knees go weak, and there was nothing else left but the dark.

Aiacos felt Kagaho's hand slip from his ankle as he reached for Shion. He couldn't reach him, not in time, and he lost track of where both were as he strained the teleport, reaching for the nearest entrance out of the dark. His methods of teleportation weren't unlike Shion's, when he was using his abilities as a Judge of Hell. There were places only accessible to the psychopomps, roads only taken by dead things on their way to the various underworlds. For him, it was as easy as reaching out to find the road he wanted and grab ahold of it. It was more difficult, though, to find his way out of the dark.

When he tumbled out of the portal and landed on his feet, it was with the knowledge his suitors hadn't fallen out beside him. They were nearby - he could feel them as strong as torches in the dark, and he couldn't lose them so easily - but they weren't in the same room as him. Where he was, though… The floor was damp grey-blue marble and the lights above him were steel and something translucent and flimsy, and the lights themselves were flickering. He opened his mouth to the ceiling, tasting lightning, phosphorus, and the faint acrid taste of mercury. An interesting, if unorthodox, combination.

This was Atlantis, that much he could tell. The marble stone was of Greek craftsmanship, but there was no way to get that specific colour without submerging the marble for quite a while - or better yet, if it had never seen the surface at all. So far as he could tell, he was alone. That seemed ideal, but if he wasn't meeting the Marinas, then they were elsewhere. He and Dohko might be the only ones who could actually win against any of them. Kagaho was powerful, but he was all fire. Shion had more power than he understood, but he didn't know how to use any of it properly, and training had been slow going keeping it under Sage's nose.

Or maybe he just hoped Shion would misfire and kill the man completely accidentally and he wouldn't have to file any paperwork for it. Aiacos looked around the room, noting the storage boxes in some translucent material he'd never seen before, like a sort of soft, cloudy glass. Some of the boxes were more recognizably made of hardened paper, and all were labelled with a thick ink. Shoes, mostly, and gloves, none of which were made with any sort of craftsmanship he recognized. That bothered him - he'd been around for a long, long time, and he didn't recognize any of what he was looking at.

His jump had been a little large, but it wasn't so different than jumping back into the Meikai. Something did, however, feel deeply wrong.

He didn't so much hear the shuffle behind him as he felt it, the presence of another person watching him from the shadows. "Better come out into the light," he said softly, lifting a suddenly lightning-filled hand, loud enough to be heard over supposedly speaking to himself, "Or this might hurt quite a bit, and I'm sure nobody wants that."

What answered him was a chuckle. He didn't so much as turn around. "Really, every one of you that we've found has just been worse and worse. Only figures we'd find you last. Some awfully strange stories we've been hearing, but they all reek of _you_. I've heard your tale, haven't we all, Aiacos?"

"That's Garuda Aiacos to you, little fish," he answered, and he slowly turned on one heel to face the pink-haired Marina, Scylla if he wasn't wrong, lover to Charybdis who walked away from her in the Age of Myth to follow their mother. He narrowed his eyes, half a cocky smile playing on his lips. "I hope you got the version of the story that told you I was a hero. I'm much nicer that way."

The Marina stepped further into the phosphorus, flickering light, and his smile was a recognizable thing, a sort of smile he only saw bits and pieces of in his fellow Spectres, held on memory contracts until nobody remembered their stories. He narrowed his eyes further. "Let me guess, little fish. Your mother's a naiad."

The Marina's smile faded, and he blinked. "Pincoya," he said, after a moment. "My name is Io. How would a Spectre know _that_? The lot of you are brutes."

"The lot of us know at least three languages apiece, and we keep the history of the world," Aiacos countered. "Your mother's a legend and so am I. We remember. Now, history lesson's over. I had three companions, you said you'd found them. Where might they be?"

Io's smile was back. "Why would I tell you that?"

Aiacos had to bite back a sigh. Of course he didn't want to just listen, and tradition stated he was likely going to have to beat it out of him. He had lightning, though. Even beneath the sea, where storms were of an entirely different nature, he still had lightning. "Because if you tell me where they are and let me go get them, I'll get out of your hair without a fight, and I won't slaughter every single person I see," he answered. "I won't kill your servants and your children and I won't topple your god's throne just to prove I'm good at pushing things over. You can't beat me, dear Io. I've been fighting too long."

He stepped up to him, not face to face but beside him enough to put a hand on his shoulder. Lowering his voice into something almost intimate, close enough to a lover's whisper to terrify, he added, "If you let me fetch what's mine and walk away, then all of that blood won't be on your hands." 

He held still, inches from him, leaning forward just enough and freezing almost stone still. He couldn't hear Io's undoubtedly-racing heartbeat, but he could hear his quickened, shallow breathing, and nobody lived as long as he did as a Spectre without learning how to be terrifying.

Io's terrified, shallow breathing switched places with a growl, almost inaudible over the ringing in Aiacos' ears that he no longer remembered what it was like to live without. He still heard it, and he tipped forward, slamming his shoulder into Io's breastplate. Io's snarl turned audible, loud against the echo of the marble walls. 

Aiacos closed his eyes, and bolted through the doorway. He could track his lovers by their cosmos, and it was simply a matter of whether or not Io could keep up. Even if he could, Aiacos was sure he could stop him. He just wasn't worth the effort quite yet. His footsteps were silent on the carpet, Io's much louder.

He dropped to the floor as Io's cosmos rose, diving back towards him. Io yelped, firing a technique where Aiacos had just been, only to be hit in the shins with a metal wing that sent him toppling. Aiacos cawed, jumping over him with a step on his back, and kept going.

Shion was the closest ahead of him, Shion who would need more help than any of them if he was going to survive bringing the city and a depressing amount of water pressure down on top of them. He just had to find him. The hallway was long, and damp, and he was again thankful for his forethought in rubbing the soles of his boots with rubber gum to keep them from sliding through every puddle he came across.

How they kept their paperwork from being soaked, he didn't know, and he didn't much care, either. The hallway opened up to what had to be the throne room, a side entrance of a much larger hall that was carpeted in gold and lead up to a dais, where Poseidon's smug, faintly recognizable vessel awaited him in full kamui, trident in hand.

Aiacos grumbled. Poseidon's vessel - definitely the vessel, the god himself was less smug and had more of a beard - beckoned him forward. Guards flanked either side of the hall, half the Marina Generals present. The floor was covered in sea-rubbish, kelp and lost trinkets and driftwood. He squared his shoulders and stepped forward, into the phosphorus lighting, offering a mostly-neutral expression with half a cocky smile. Faking confidence really was the only way to get anything done, and it had certainly beaten Scylla Io. "Welcome, dear Garuda Aiacos," said Poseidon's vessel. Aiacos continued to walk up towards the dais. His face hit a piece of kelp and he tripped, falling facefirst into a thinly-spread pile of the stuff.

It gave way under him into a clear trap, and before his wings had the chance to open and flap, he felt the sharp _crack_ of an oak chair across the back of his head.

The Marina General eyed the prisoner, bound in chains but still wearing the dark, evil armour of Hades' Spectres, a longtime enemy that couldn't be called a friend any longer. They'd brought them in one by one, and now it was time to see what was going on.

"All right. Spill it. Why are you here?"

"Someone grabbed us in the middle of my Judge's teleport and now we are at the bottom of the sea, and I would like to leave," Kagaho answered, voice gruff and blunt and not at all forgiving, looking the General in the eye with an uncaring expression.

"We're very lost and I don't know where we are and please don't eat me," Shion replied, voice a bit more of a squeak than it had been before.

"We heard from the Wyverns that Poseidon had the coolest chambers that we could fuck in, and we thought we'd see if they were right," Dohko said, offering a bright smile that surely would make the General quit his job on the spot and find another post.

"Minos kicked us out of the Meikai because Shion ate all his leftovers, and we're only allowed back if we kill his oldest enemy," Aiacos said, looking the General in the eye with a matter-of-fact tone. They'd never find out he was lying.

Baian settled into his spot on the dais, just having returned from attempting to interrogate their four Spectre prisoners. He handed the scroll to Krishna to read out, pinching the bridge of his nose. Krishna didn't get four lines into it before he started losing his composure. "None of these match up at _all_ ," he managed between fits of laughter. "I thought Spectres were supposed to be good at lying."

"I don't think these ones are," Kasa pointed out, looking faintly affronted. He had a right to be, with Dohko's impromptu soliloquy of what his suitors were like in bed that seemed a bit too far out of a romance novel of the eighteenth century over something vaguely resembling realistic. If Dohko's goal had been making him uncomfortable and wanting to leave the interrogation room the entire time they were in there together, he had quite succeeded.

"Well, one of them's a Judge, and he was the one making threats," Sorrento noted. "Doesn't that mean he's the one who probably isn't lying?"

"That or he's trying to distract us so that the others can escape, because that was his entire goal," Io answered. He held a pack of ice - courtesy of Isaak - to the back of his neck, and was absentmindedly rubbing it every now and then. "He was making a lot of threats and said he wouldn't act on them if we let him take them and go."

"I think the firebird was the most honest," Kanon said, speaking for the first time in the emergency meeting. "He seemed very literal. Either he's the best liar they've got, or they forgot to tell him to lie."

A general murmur of agreement ran through the Generals. "Should we let them go?" Baian asked. "They're not our problem, they're Athena's problem-"

"Hey!"

"Is Julian not good enough for you, you really want Saori too?"

"Uh…"

"Anyway, they're not our problem, and that Judge has been known to make good on the mass murder threats. Let's just… let's just let them go, tell the short kid he's not allowed in Julian's bed, and hope that's the last we ever see of them."

Julian himself was sipping something electric pink with a lemon. He hadn't been saying much, but he had been eyeing up the Generals, all of whom were in varying states of disarray from corralling runaway Spectres out of Atlantis and into jail. He himself had requested that they be placed near each other, so the guards could report back on the gossip they shared between them. 

He waved a hand, getting his Generals' attention. "Let them go if that's what they really want, and give them souvenirs from the gift shop. We're nothing if not very generous hosts."

His generals nodded back, saluting him. Half of them split off to go get the prisoners, and the other half stayed, settled on the dais to pose the perfect picture of a god and his attendants for whoever else was going to try breaking in.

Aiacos couldn't look at the shirt Kagaho was awkwardly wearing over his surplice without laughing. It was a shade of blue so bright it was almost electric, made of a material that the label said was 'polyester' and felt like a warped version of cotton, and it said 'I Went To The Lost City of Atlantis And Only Got This Shitty T-Shirt' in dark blue lettering across it. He himself had a fake straw hat made of the same material emblazoned with Poseidon's logo, and he was fairly certain he could get Minos to curse it and help him prank Rhadamanthys with it. Shion had a pair of knee-length trousers in the same blue as Kagaho's shirt with white stylized tropic leaves across it, and Dohko had escaped with an appallingly-bright pink set of sunglasses that matched nothing he was wearing and looked fantastic.

"Can we leave," Kagaho said, and it wasn't a question. The Marinas had cut holes in his shirt so it would fit over his wings, and it looked positively horrific on him.

"I want another pair of sunglasses," Aiacos answered in lieu of an actual response. "But yes, we can leave the evil wet place. Give me a kiss and we can go."

Shion stepped up behind him and wrapped his arms around Aiacos' neck, kissing his cheek without letting go of him. Dohko reached for his hand and licked it in lieu of kissing him, before pitching himself at Kagaho to be picked up and carried. Kagaho huffed, but put a wing around Aiacos and Shion regardless. His kiss was damp embers and salty ashes, and a moment later, they were gone, back to their rightful place in the timeline.

Three hundred years in the future, Aiacos would find himself being delivered an envelope marked with a wax stamp of Poseidon, and question what it would be. He would open it to find the picture Baian took of the four of them in their terrible gift shop attire, and he'd laugh, take a picture and text it to both Shion and Dohko, place the picture in a frame on his desk, and be more thankful than he'd ever admit that someone got them on camera.


End file.
